This week we feature two flags that have drawn upon quite unique inspirations for their designs. The first is Amblecote, a small town just north of Stourbridge, which many might consider to be a suburb though a civic history of its own belies its nature as distinct town.

Amblecote had its own town council, though it did not have a coat of arms, instead designing a corporate seal for itself. This seemed to be a good start for a flag, and there was precedent of simply using a seal for a flag with Sedgley. Though the more I studied flag design the more resistant I became about doing this, for two reasons: firstly that a seal is too intricate a design to be easily seen and recognised whilst fluttering about in the wind, often at a distance. Secondly would be the fact that most of the flag would then be white, not out of any reason but simply for lack of anything to put there, which leads to the problem that white is not a good colour to stand out against the sky, as well as getting noticeably dirtier quicker than flags of other colours.

So I researched the Amblecote seal a little more. The design comprises three elements that show figures working in glass making (at the top of the seal), brick making (at the bottom right) and precision engineering (at the bottom left). From this I decided to represent these aspects in a heraldic way and as such chose a sunburst (a common mark in glassmaking of the area), brick axe and cog wheel. It transpired that the seal of Amblecote had actually been carved into a piece of blue oval glass for ceremonial purposes. As such I decided to put a white sunburst on a blue oval at the centre of the design. From the orientation of the seal it seemed natural to then place the cog on the left of the flag and the axe on the right, though I coloured them white and placed them on a red vertical stripe. The stripes stop the flag from being mainly white, provide more contrast, and reference the playing colours of the towns football team.

Bradley is another small village, though this time it is next to Bilston. Bradley has no symbol heritage to my knowledge, not even a seal as in the case of Amblecote, so it was up to me to derive some from first principals so to speak. My first inspiration came from some famous residents of the town, primarily Walter Llewelyn Hughes (better known by his alias of Hugh Walters) who wrote a notable series of science fiction books. These were about United Nations space programme designed to explore the solar system, which put me in mind of the sun symbol of neighbouring Bilston. So I opted for a golden sun, designed differently to Bilston’s to distinguish Bradley, on a United Nations blue background. Not only does this reference the author but ties together the focus of a small town with the aspirations of a global community.

The sun is then topped with a baron’s coronet owing to the fact that Dennis Turner (known as Baron Bilston) actually hails from Bradley. At this point the symbol that I was constructing felt quite like a military insignia which played very nicely on the final symbol I decided to add. As an area know for its pigeon breeding I added a heraldically styled pigeon wing either side of the sun. The result is quite a unique flag with a quite ’military’ feel, unsurprising considering the inspiration derived from a baron and a science fiction world exploration team! Nonetheless, it is testament to the concepts of being part of the wider world, and that even small towns have a right to official looking symbols of identity.

Article is written by Phillip Tibbets, researcher of Heraldic Art and co-founder of Heartland Heritagewear